The Lace Reader Read Free Page B

of the house, figuring I’m going to have to break in and not wanting to be seen.
    When we were kids, my sister, Lyndley, and I could break into any house. I was a master at picking locks. We used to break into people’s houses just to sit in them—“like Goldilocks tasting porridge and sampling beds,” Lyndley used to say. For the most part, we limited our break-ins to the summerhouses. Down at the Willows one time, we broke into a house and actually cleaned it. That’s the kind of thing only a girl would do. Outlaw certainly, but homemaker, too.
    I walk around the back of the coach house to a less visible spot half hidden by the garden. There is a small pane in the door, bull’seye glass, already cracked. Once I’m inside the coach house, getting into the main house is a snap. I pick up a rock, wrapping the sleeve of my shirt over it. A quick tap and the crack spreads. I pull the glass fragments out carefully and wedge my hand through the small space, twisting the dead bolt that has been the only thing holding the door in alignment. Either because the lock is so rusty or because The Lace Reader 17
    I am, I don’t anticipate the way the door heaves as it opens. It pulls my arm with it, cutting through my cotton shirt, drawing blood. I watch the blood pool. It’s not too bad; there’s not very much of it, not after what I’ve gotten used to anyway. “Just a flesh wound, Copper,” I say aloud in my best Jimmy Cagney. Then, ridiculously on cue, a police cruiser actually pulls up, and, even more ridiculously, the father of my first boyfriend, Jack, climbs out of the car and walks toward the house. This is strange, since Jack’s father is not a cop, he’s a lobsterman. I’m having one of those moments when you’re pretty sure you’re dreaming but you don’t want to count on it. I regard Jack’s father as he approaches me, his face screwed up into half concern, half joy, looking stranger than anything in my dream life ever did.
    “You should have called the station,” he says. “We have a key.”
    It is not Jack’s father’s voice but his younger brother’s that I finally recognize.
    “Hi, Jay-Jay,” I say, getting it, remembering now that Beezer had told me Jay-Jay was a cop.
    He hugs me. “Been a while,” he says, thinking, I’m sure, how bad I look and running through a list of possibilities in his head. I fight the urge to tell him I’ve just had my uterus cut out, that I almost bled to death before the emergency surgery.
    “You’re bleeding,” he says, reaching out for my arm. The cops here aren’t as scared by blood as the cops in L.A. are.
    “Just a flesh wound, Copper,” I say too loud. He leads me inside and makes me sit down at the kitchen table. I’m bare-armed now, holding a paper towel to my forearm.
    “You need stitches,” Jay-Jay says.
    “It’s fine.”
    “At least get some Neosporin on it. Or some of that herbal crap Eva sells.”
    “I’m fine, Jay-Jay,” I say, just a little too sharply. 18 Brunonia
    Barry
    A long silence. “I’m sorry about Eva,” he says finally. “I wish I had something new I could tell you.”
    “Me, too.”
    “That Alzheimer’s stuff is all crap. I saw her a week before she disappeared. She was still sharp as a tack.” He thinks a minute. “You need to talk to Rafferty.”
    “Who?”
    “Detective Rafferty. He’s your man. He’s the one who’s handling the case.”
    He looks around the room as if there’s something here, something he wants to say, but then he changes his mind.
    “What?”
    “Nothing. . . . I’ll tell Rafferty you’re here. He’ll want to talk to you. He’s in court today, though. Traffic court. Whatever you do, don’t drive with him. He’s the worst driver in the world.”
    “Okay,” I say, wondering why Jay-Jay thought driving with Rafferty was even a possibility. We stand there awkwardly, neither of us knowing how to follow that last thread of conversation.
    “You look good,” he says finally. “For